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Sticker of Common spring moth
Bug card No. 1142 of 4,939

Common spring moth

Heliomata cycladata
Eats: PlantsMothsForests and woods6 legs

The common spring moth is a small moth from eastern North America. As its name says, it is one of the moths you can meet early in the year, already in March. Its caterpillars live on locust trees.

Lives in
Eastern North America, from southern Canada to Georgia and Alabama
Wingspan
2 cm (0.79 in)
Top speed
about 9.9 km/h (6.2 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It is a little moth that cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
The caterpillars eat the leaves of black locust and honey locust trees.
For real!Photo of Common spring moth
Picture by Cyndy Sims Parr. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How wide are its wings?

Common spring moth wings about 2 cm tip to tip (0.79 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)
wings as wide as 3 grains of rice in a rowcould fly across a whole football pitch in 38 seconds

How big is Common spring moth compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its wings are only about 2 centimetres from tip to tip.

2

The moths fly from March to July.

3

It lives in many places, from Ontario and Quebec in Canada down to South Carolina, Georgia and Arkansas.

4

Its caterpillars only eat two kinds of trees, black locust and honey locust.

you asked

Most asked questions about Common spring moth

?How big is the common spring moth?

Small. Its wings are about 2 centimetres across.

?What does the common spring moth caterpillar eat?

Leaves of black locust and honey locust trees.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Heliomata cycladata
Named by
Grote & Robinson, 1866
Group
Moths
Family
Geometridae
Classification
Insecta > Lepidoptera > Geometridae
Lives on
North America

Where the facts come from

  1. Heliomata cycladata (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Cyndy Sims Parr. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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More from the same group: Moths

Also at home here: Forests and woods

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